Page 65 of Cherry Auction

“No!”

He’s just poured the egg in the hissing pan, when he turns to me.

“What?” He asks it almost distractedly, as if annoyed I’m questioning him.

“I said no.” I stomp over to him and get right in his face. “No. I’m not going anywhere.”

His jaw tenses as he glares down at me. “You will. Because it’s what’s best for you.”

I scoff. “And you suddenly know what’s best for me?”

“Yes. I do.”

I scoff again. “Why the fuck is that?”

His eyes narrow. “Because I’m your elder.”

“You’re just a twenty-six-year-old asshole. You don’t control me. You don’t control shit.”

His features harden dangerously in the way Sir’s did downstairs in the dungeon sometimes. “Don’t push me, love. I’m keeping myself on a very tight leash.”

Oh he is, is he?

I know what I want now. I don’t just want to be near Donny. And I want more than for him to look at me like he did at me in those pictures. I want to feel it all. That and what I had this last week, all mixed up together in whatever we are or could be together now.

So I throw my arms around his neck and kiss him.

And the second our lips collide, it’s like I’ve unleashed a storm, because he kisses me just as furiously back.

TWENTY-FOUR

DOMHNALL

I absolutely fucking losemyself in the taste of her lips.

I’ve missed her so goddamn fucking much. I pin her to the counter and kiss her just like I used to in those long afternoons lost on the Green, making out like mad teenagers.

Fuck I’ve missed the taste of her lips. She kisses the exact way she used to. She feels the same, too. And for just a moment, I’m the same kid I was back then. Cold grass underneath us and the Dublin sun only occasionally breaking thru the fog and glinting off the water.

She and me were the only things in the world.

But it never did last forever like I wanted it to. Later thatnight, or early the next morning when I got to the workshop because I started avoiding going in the evenings, he’d corner me. He’d get me and there’d be nothing I could do about it. And I’d try to hold on to the sunlight moment and stay far away in my head while he?—

A hand touches my face, and I shout “Fuck!” and yank back from Brooke, blinking hard.

I grab her wrists and pin them behind her back, constraining her there, both of us breathing hard.

I’m not who I was then. My teeth clench as the monster inside me yawns awake. He never sleeps long.

Now more than ever, I need to stay in control.

Brooke just blinks up at me, saying nothing about me pinning her hands behind her back. She only leans forward as far as she can with me restraining her. Her pink lips and cheeks flushed from my kiss.

I drag her to me by her wrists at the small of her back because I can’t fucking keep away from her, and we kiss furiously again.

I only pull back to growl, “If we do this, we do it my way. I’m in control.”

She nods, eyes still wide. “We fit like puzzle pieces, don’t you see? You lead and I follow. Make me whole, Donny.”

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